


Excuses

by squirenonny



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: 31 Days of Sadfic, CFSWF, Gen, WoR spoilers, fudged timeline so Jasnah returns before Kaladin leaves for Hearthstone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 17:17:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4271484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirenonny/pseuds/squirenonny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Telling Dalinar about Moash was the hardest thing he'd ever done.</p><p>Written for CFSWF 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Excuses

“You knew.”

There was no anger in Dalinar’s voice. Perhaps some reproach, but not enough to make it sharp. Kaladin flinched anyway, and stiffened his neck so he didn’t look away. Syl hovered at the edge of his vision, silent.

Even she knew how serious this was.

“Yes, sir,” Kaladin said. A hundred excuses flitted through his mind, but he held them in. No compromise. That was what had got him into this mess in the first place.

Dalinar stared at him for a long moment. The air was cool here at Urithiru’s highest point, mountain winds slipping in through the tall, narrow windows. They tugged as Syl’s dress and hair, blurring her form as though she wanted to ride them as a ribbon of light or a tumble of leaves. She stayed, though. She’d promised.

“One of your men wanted the king dead, and you knew.” Dalinar spoke slowly, forming each word as if searching for a lie. “And you did nothing.”

Kaladin closed his eyes, caught himself, and refocused on Dalinar. “Yes, sir.” The words tasted sour on his tongue. He spoke again, more firmly. “That is correct, Brightlord Dalinar.”

A quirk of the highprince’s eyebrow said he’d noticed the change in address, and if he didn’t know the reason, he at least had an inkling. After this admission, Dalinar could not think to keep Kaladin as the captain of the King’s guard. He was still a Radiant, which might complicate things, but Kaladin would no longer be in the chain of command. To continue calling him _sir_ would be an insult.

The silence hanging over the table had the weight of a coming highstorm, and Kaladin wished he hadn’t waited for Shallan and Renarin to leave. Even Adolin’s presence would have been welcome. At least when _he_ got angry he was vocal about it. Dalinar’s calm face gave nothing away.

“Aren’t you going to say anything else, Captain? Defend yourself?”

“There’s nothing to defend.” The words slipped out while Kaladin was still gaping over the title. _Captain_ , even still? Not _soldier_? Not _Stormblessed_? Not a void of address that would have stung as much as a curse? “I was wrong. If Elhokar—if the King had died, it would have been my fault. Nothing can excuse that.” 

* * *

 

“That went better than I expected,” said Syl, a ribbon of light twining around his head.

Kaladin turned down an ill-lit staircase, away from the light and noise of the more populated sections of the tower. “Just wait,” he said. “It won’t last.”

Nearly an hour had passed in the tense meeting room. Dalinar had not raised his voice once, though he’d pried out every detail—about Moash, about Danlan and Graves and the rest, about the battle on the night of the Everstorm.

There was more to tell than Kaladin had realized, and the conversation— _interrogation, more like,_ said a bitter corner of his mind—had left him drained.

Not Syl, though.

“You’re still Captain, aren’t you?” She gave one last twirl and shifted back into her human form, bent at the waist to poke his nose. Her whole form shivered at the contact. “I think he understands.”

“He’s still processing.” Kaladin hunched his shoulders and walked on. He couldn’t brush past Syl so easily, of course. She floated along in front of him, frowning now. “He made me captain because he couldn’t trust anyone not to be working for Sadeas.” Not a problem now, exactly; Sadeas’s body had turned up the day before, and Kaladin hoped they never found the culprit.

No.

One glance at Syl made his stomach churn with guilt. He wouldn’t protect another assassin. He _wouldn’t_. He’d almost killed Syl once. Never again.

“The only reason Dalinar hasn’t fired me yet is that he’s still trying to decide if he _has_ any better options.”

Syl’s brow furrowed. “So you think he doesn’t trust you?”

“I think he wants to trust everyone and knows he can’t.”

“That doesn’t make any—Oh!” Syl spun, squealed, and flitted off as a translucent silver mist. She stopped at a bend in the corridor, where the distant sphere lamp cast a deep shadow.

Kaladin didn’t have long to wonder what Syl had found. Jasnah Kholin—tall, stern-faced, and graceful—rounded the corner on silent feet. She stopped at the sight of Kaladin, her eyes flicking toward Syl, or, more likely, her own spren, Ivory. Syl regarded the other spren as long-lost friends, except for Pattern, whom she called “the liespren” with a sniff and a curl of her lip.

Kaladin returned his eyes to Jasnah. The princess had returned three days earlier in a flurry of hugs and tears from those who had thought her dead, with a terse explanation for her survival and increasingly exasperated requests for the space and silence she needed to work.

“Shouldn’t you be guarding my brother, Captain?” Jasnah asked stiffly. “Or my uncle?”

“My men have it covered. I don’t suppose you want me to guard _you_.” Kaladin glanced pointedly at the empty hallway behind her. He’d set Leyten and Drehy to the afternoon shift, but Kaladin himself would have had a hard time staying on top of the Elsecaller.

Leyten and Drehy didn’t seem to mind, at least once Kaladin made it clear he didn’t blame them for losing the princess.

Jasnah raised an eyebrow. “I was stabbed through the heart not two months ago, Captain. I won’t claim to be immortal, but the sort of thing that _can_ kill me—or you, for that matter—is not something a few spearmen can hold off.”

Kaladin could have pointed out that Dalinar and Renarin, both Radiants themselves, accepted their guards without complaint, but he doubted Jasnah would care. He’d seen enough of her debates with Shallan and once, briefly, Adolin, to know that he didn’t ever want to try arguing with the likes of Jasnah Kholin. Shallan turned words in a way that reminded Kaladin of his mother, but Jasnah wielded wit like a Shardblade: ruthless, efficient, and impossible to defend against.

Grunting, Kaladin walked on. He hadn’t come this way to find company.

“Giving up so soon?” Jasnah asked. Kaladin turned, but she was still watching the spren. Syl was laughing about something, glowing faintly like she was made of Stormlight. As though sensing Kaladin’s gaze, she became a ribbon of light and streaked over to him.

Jasnah turned, crossed her arms.

“I would have expected more insistence from the Captain of the Guard. Surely Elhokar and Adolin give you more trouble than I.”

Kaladin snorted. “Adolin, maybe.” Elhokar would have taken a hundred personal guards without complaint, but Kaladin wasn’t about to comment on the king’s paranoia to his sister. “Anyway, it won’t be my problem much longer.”

“You’re resigning?” A hint of surprise showed in Jasnah’s eyes, though her voice remained level. “But of course. You’re a Shardbearer, quite aside from everything else, which makes you fourth dahn. I don’t suppose you _would_ content yourself with the same post you had as a darkeyes.”

“I’m still a darkeyes,” Kaladin said, sharp enough to earn a raised eyebrow from the princess. “And it’s not about my rank.”

She waited, storm her. She didn’t ask him to explain, or even demand it. Just stood there, watching him, the light in her eyes suggesting that she already knew what he was going to say, though of course she couldn’t. Not yet. Even Bridge Four only knew the barest details of Moash’s disappearance.

He would have to tell them soon. Tonight. Before the rumors started to spread and they heard it from someone else. Before he was dismissed and they had a new captain foisted onto them.

Kaladin bit back a curse. Half of his men— _all_ of Bridge Four—had only joined the King’s guard because of Kaladin. Without him, would they leave, too? He would have to convince them to stay. They were good men, and loyal, and quickly becoming the best soldiers Kaladin had ever known, even without Stormlight. Dalinar _needed_ them, whatever he decided to do with Kaladin.

Jasnah’s gaze never wavered. A lighteyes’ look if ever he saw one, all calm expectation, never doubting that the darkeyed spearman would leap to obey her unspoken command.

Fine. She would hear sooner or later, and Kaladin didn’t see much point in causing trouble now. “One of my men was involved in a plot to kill your brother. I covered it up. Highprince Dalinar knows now, and I’m sure he’s already looking for my replacement.”

Even that didn’t crack Jasnah’s cool mask. “Because of a plot. Which _you_ foiled, I might add.”

“Because I betrayed his trust.”

Jasnah waved this off. “That happens, even among Radiants. We lie, we steal. We fake our own deaths and receive a long and insufferable lecture from our mothers about making her worry.” Kaladin frowned, which made Jasnah smile—just a slight curve to her lips, a more subdued version of what Shallan wore when she felt she was being particularly witty. “We move on. We don’t have a choice.”

“You think everyone’s just going to _forget_ I conspired against the king.”

The smile vanished in a flash. “Don’t be so dramatic, child.”

“Child!” Kaladin spluttered. Laughing, Syl alighted on one of the small, glowing gemstones woven into Jasnah’s hair—practical more than fashionable, Kaladin suspected.

“What you did is nothing next to the schemes the highprinces dream up over breakfast. Worry all you like—” Jasnah didn’t raise her voice, but she still somehow managed to override Kaladin’s protests. “But don’t make this into something it’s not.”

“But—”

She cut him off with a look, then suddenly gathered her skirts and brushed past him. “Come with me, Captain.”

By the time Kaladin collected himself enough to protest, Jasnah was already around the next corner, Syl still riding atop her hair and grinning back at Kaladin. Muttering about lighteyes’ arrogance, Kaladin stalked after them both.

* * *

Kaladin stared at the stack of books Jasnah had forced into his arms. “You want me to what?”

“Read those,” Jasnah said. It had a tone of distraction; she’d turned away from him once she’d deposited the last book on his stack, and was already settling in at her desk, a book and a sheaf of notes open before her. “Or ask a scribe to read them to you, I suppose. Come find me when you’ve finished.”

“I’m a soldier, Brightness, not a scholar.”

Jasnah wrote something in her notes, then spared Kaladin a brief look. “If you have time to brood, you have time to study. And since my ward appears to have taken on her own projects since I’ve been away, I find myself lacking an aide. You seem to think I need a guard, so you can come yourself, and we’ll discuss what you’ve read.”

She took up her pen again, and Kaladin’s half-hearted protests didn’t so much as turn her head. Gritting his teeth, he turned and walked out with the stack of books. Sylphrena rode atop the stack all the way back to his quarters, where he dropped the lot of them on the small table in the corner. He had more important things to do than help a lighteyes with her research.

* * *

For two days, the books sat untouched in Kaladin’s quarters. Syl made a habit of perching on them while she talked, as though to remind Kaladin they were there. Kaladin ignored her and the princess equally.

He kept sending guards, too, though Jasnah inevitably left them guarding an empty room while she continued her work elsewhere. Each morning she gave her guards a message to pass along to Kaladin, asking him how his reading was coming along.

Kaladin ignored those, too.

On the third morning, after Sigzil delivered another message from Jasnah, Skar caught his attention. He’d been in charge of the night shift guarding Dalinar, and the highprince had asked him to send Kaladin to the room at the top of the tower where the Radiants met.

From Skar’s bracing smile, this wasn’t Radiant business.

Kaladin took a deep breath, glanced at Syl, kneeling on his shoulder, and headed for the stairs. Bridge Four knew, now. Kaladin had told them the first night, holding nothing back. It had been almost as hard as telling Dalinar, at least until he realized that the bridgemen were more hurt than angry, and that both came from Moash’s betrayal and not Kaladin’s misstep.

He had, eventually, wrung out a promise from every member of Bridge Four that they wouldn’t resign if Kaladin had to, though he feared they only promised because they didn’t think it was a real possibility.

They might soon be proved wrong.

Kaladin nodded to the guards stationed outside the meeting room—a man from the old Cobalt Guard, and one who had been on Bridge Eight, a new addition to the rotation in the wake of the Everstorm, which had laid up nearly half of Bridge Four with broken bones and arrow wounds and other injuries.

Kaladin knocked, and Dalinar called out for him to enter.

Neither spoke as the door swung shut behind Kaladin. He remained at the edge of the room—no point in joining Dalinar at the massive, Soulcast table that had been set up around the room’s central pedestal if he was just going to be dismissed.

Dalinar studied him impassively. There were lines around his eyes and shadows beneath. The days had been frantic since arriving at Urithiru, and it was taking its toll on them all.

“I still trust you, Captain Kaladin,” Dalinar said into the silence.

The words hit Kaladin like a stormwall, and he pressed his back against the door to keep from swaying. “You do?”

Dalinar looked him up and down, searching for…something. "I do. More importantly, so does the King.” He gestured to the chair opposite his own, and Kaladin forced himself to move on weak knees and sit. “I would have told you as much three days ago, but I had to make sure Elhokar felt the same. He…” Dalinar hesitated, a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. “His exact words were, ‘We’ve all done things we aren’t proud of.’”

There was a question in that last part that Kaladin pretended not to hear. Elhokar hadn’t spoken to him about the night of the assassination attempt, or about their conversation some days before, but Kaladin didn’t need an order to use discretion. Elhokar had revealed a side of himself Kaladin doubted even Dalinar had seen, and he would not betray the king’s confidence. All the more so if it made Elhokar think he owed Kaladin some leniency.

Kaladin wasn’t certain how to feel about that. Trust. They couldn’t really mean it. Not after everything he’d done. If this was just Elhokar's shame and some perceived debt, how could Kaladin accept it?

“There is one thing,” Dalinar said, “and please don’t take this as a punishment.” He waited for Kaladin to nod, nervously, before going on. “The ones who tried to kill the king are still out there. They may try again.”

Dalinar was still working up to it, but Kaladin didn’t need to hear the rest. “You want me to find them.” _To find Moash._

Pity softened Dalinar’s eyes. “This is not punishment,” he repeated, firmly. “I don’t expect you to confront them personally, just to coordinate the search. I am…trying to learn how to give away authority and let it stay given.” His lips twisted wryly on the words, but if it was a joke Kaladin didn’t see the humor. “I trust you, Captain, but I won’t ask you to do something you can’t in good conscience do.”

“No.” It hurt Kaladin to say it, but he would not let himself back down from this. “I’ll find them, sir. All of them.”

* * *

Kaladin wasn’t on duty until the afternoon, which was either very fortunate or a cruel twist of fate. He and Syl returned to Bridge Four’s quarters in silence. The other off-duty men greeted him with hesitant questions and almost as hesitant smiles when he told them what Dalinar had said. A good many of them would be more than happy to help in the search for Moash; Kaladin saw it in their eyes.

But they sensed his mood and protested only a little when he withdrew into his rooms.

Moash. The closest thing to a friend he’d had in Bridge Four. A good man, though misguided. Kaladin hated him no more than he hated himself. They’d walked the assassin’s path together, and Kaladin had turned back only at the last minute.

But he would find Moash, and return him to the king’s justice. He would hope that Moash found it in himself to change before that time came. He would hope that with Dalinar to advise him instead of Roshone, Elhokar would find mercy. But he would see this duty through regardless.

“Is this right, Syl?” he asked, lying on his bed with his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “I’m not…what was it? A Skybreaker? I’m not a Skybreaker. You told me that once.”

“Dalinar’s a good man,” Syl said. Kaladin wondered if she was deliberately avoiding his question. “He forgave you; he might forgive Moash, too, if he’s given up on revenge.”

“And if he hasn’t?”

Syl sighed heavily. “If he hasn’t…then…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You can’t protect Moash and Elhokar both, Kaladin.”

Kaladin closed his eyes, feeling as though a weight had settled onto his chest. “I will protect those who cannot protect themselves,” he whispered. “I protect because it’s right. I guess neither of those says I have to protect a full Shardbearer trying to kill the king.”

“I guess not.”

 _I knew it would come to this_. Kaladin could admit that to himself, now. He’d known ever since he realized Moash was involved in the plot against the king. His choices had always been to side with Moash and the assassins, or to hand them over to justice. The first choice had led to disaster, which meant it was time to try the other road.

Kaladin sat up, letting out a long breath. Syl sat atop Jasnah’s books, chin in her hands, looking morose. Dalinar had said he would provide a list of clerks and soldiers Kaladin could use in his search. Until that arrived, there was little he could do. For now…

Kaladin stood and went to see about finding someone to read him those storming books.

* * *

A knock at the door raised Jasnah’s eyes from her notes. She had left the day’s guards behind shortly after her morning meal—they were stifling, true, but she also needed the practice. For all her years of Soulcasting, she’d only recently begun to unravel the secrets of Elsecalling. The Oathgates had helped, now that she was able to see them in action.

“Come,” she called, wondering who had tracked her down, and how. Ivory lurked in the shadows beneath her desk, silent but watchful. Jasnah resisted the urge to take in Stormlight.

The door opened, and the captain of her brother’s guards stood there, stone-faced, a stack of books in his hands.

“Bounty hunters?” he asked dryly. “I didn’t realize that was your area of study.”

Jasnah turned back to her notes before he saw her smile. “Quite the contrary. My father was killed by an assassin. He’s dead now, it’s true, but I think it’s prudent to be ready for another, don’t you think?”

Kaladin grunted something that might have been an assent or an insult, but brought the books to the table along the wall, set them down, then took a seat facing her. “How much did you know about the Assassin in White?”

“As much as there is to know,” she said, “though I suspect you might be able to tell me a few things I won’t find in books.”

He was beating around the bush, but Jasnah was content to let him, for now. She _was_ interested in the Shin assassin, especially after all the parallels she’d drawn to the Lost Radiants. She’d been half convinced the assassin _was_ a Windrunner, until she’d come here and found Kaladin. And the Blade he’d recovered after the battle…

Yes, Jasnah could spend a day or two talking about the Assassin in White before she dragged Kaladin around to his real reason for coming.

Dalinar had already been considering asking Kaladin to head the search for the assassins before his confession. Jasnah had feigned apathy, but part of his story had piqued her interest: one of the would-be assassins had mentioned the Diagram. Jasnah knew very little about it, only that it and the people who knew of it were dangerous.

If Captain Kaladin’s assassin friend could tell her more, she would gladly put up with a surly bodyguard until the men were found. And in the meantime, put him to better use than standing guard outside an empty room all day.

Jasnah pulled out a fresh page, inked her pen, and looked Kaladin in the eyes. “Tell me everything.”


End file.
